Currently, power consumption of memories takes up 25% to 40% of power consumption of a data center. One memory has a row-column structure, and a cell formed by crossing any row and any column is a storage unit. Therefore, any storage unit is corresponding to one row number and one column number. When a storage unit in a row is to be accessed, the entire row needs to be activated first. When a storage unit whose number is “00” (that is, the storage unit is located at a row 0 and a column 0) is to be accessed, nine storage units located in the row 0 need to be activated first, and power consumption of activation takes up at least 85% of power consumption of the memory. Therefore, the current data center has relatively large power consumption.
To reduce the power consumption of the data center, a method for accessing a memory by using a fine-granularity row is put forward. A main idea of the solution is: only a to-be-accessed storage unit needs to be activated each time during activation, and there is no need to activate all storage units that are located in a same row as the to-be-accessed storage unit. When receiving a row activation instruction, a memory does not activate a row immediately. Instead, when receiving a column activation instruction, the memory determines a to-be-activated storage unit according to a row address in the row activation instruction and a column address in the column activation instruction, and then activates the storage unit. Therefore, the power consumption of the data center is reduced.
However, in the foregoing solution, multiple storage units cannot be activated simultaneously; but instead, each time after a storage unit is activated, the storage unit needs to be precharged, and then an activation operation can be performed on a next storage unit. Therefore, a current memory activation method has a disadvantage of relatively low efficiency.